The Fortune Hunter

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THE FORTUNE HUNTER
By DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

Author of
The Deluge, The Social Secretary
The Plum Tree, etc.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I ENTER MR. FEURSTEIN
II BRASS OUTSHINES GOLD
III FORTUNE FAVORS THE IMPUDENT
IV A BOLD DASH AND A DISASTER
V A SENSITIVE SOUL SEEKS SALVE
VI TRAGEDY IN TOMKINS SQUARE
VII LOVE IN SEVERAL ASPECTS
VIII A SHEEP WIELDS THE SHEARS
IX AN IDYL OF PLAIN PEOPLE
X MR. FUERSTEIN IS CONSISTENT
XI MR. FEURSTEIN'S CLIMAX
XII EXIT MR. FUERSTEIN

THE FORTUNE HUNTER

ENTER MR. FEUERSTEIN

On an afternoon late in April Feuerstein left his boarding-house
in East Sixteenth Street, in the block just beyond the eastern
gates of Stuyvesant Square, and paraded down Second Avenue.

A romantic figure was Feuerstein, of the German Theater stock
company. He was tall and slender, and had large, handsome
features. His coat was cut long over the shoulders and in at the
waist to show his lines of strength and grace. He wore a
pearl-gray soft hat with rakish brim, and it was set with
suspicious carelessness upon bright blue, and seemed to blazon a
fiery, sentimental nature. He strode along, intensely
self-conscious, not in the way that causes awkwardness, but in
the way that causes a swagger. One had only to glance at him to
know that he was offensive to many men and fascinating to many
women.

Not an article of his visible clothing had been paid for, and the
ten-cent piece in a pocket of his trousers was his total cash
balance. But his heart was as light as the day. Had he not
youth? Had he not health? Had he not looks to bewitch the
women, brains to outwit the men? Feuerstein sniffed the
delightful air and gazed round, like a king in the midst of
cringing subjects. ``I feel that this is one of my lucky days,''
said he to himself. An aristocrat, a patrician, a
Hochwohlgeboren, if ever one was born.

At the Fourteenth-Street crossing he became conscious that a
young man was looking at him with respectful admiration and with
the anxiety of one who fears a distinguished acquaintance has
forgotten him. Feuerstein paused and in his grandest, most
gracious manner, said: ``Ah! Mr. Hartmann--a glorious day!''

Young Hartmann flushed with pleasure and stammered, ``Yes--a
GLORIOUS day!''

``It is lucky I met you,'' continued Feuerstein. ``I had an
appointment at the Cafe Boulevard at four, and came hurrying away
from my lodgings with empty pockets--I am so absent-minded.
Could you convenience me for a few hours with five dollars? I'll
repay you to-night--you will be at Goerwitz's probably? I
usually look in there after the theater.''

Hartmann colored with embarrassment.

``I'm sorry,'' he said humbly, ``I've got only a two-dollar bill.
If it would--''

Feuerstein looked annoyed. ``Perhaps I can make that do. Thank
you--sorry to trouble you. I MUST be more careful.''

The two dollars were transferred, Feuerstein gave Hartmann a
flourishing stage salute and strode grandly on. Before he had
gone ten yards he had forgotten Hartmann and had dismissed all
financial care--had he not enough to carry him through the day,
even should he meet no one who would pay for his dinner and his
drinks? ``Yes, it is a day to back myself to win--fearlessly!''

The hedge at the Cafe Boulevard was green and the tables were in
the yard and on the balconies; but Feuerstein entered, seated
himself in one of the smoke-fogged reading-rooms, ordered a glass
of beer, and divided his attention between the Fliegende Blatter
and the faces of incoming men. After half an hour two men in an
arriving group of three nodded coldly to him. He waited until
they were seated, then joined them and proceeded to make himself
agreeable to the one who had just been introduced to him--young
Horwitz, an assistant bookkeeper at a department store in
Twenty-third Street. But Horwitz had a ``soul,'' and the
yearning of that secret soul was for the stage. Feuerstein did
Horwitz the honor of dining with him. At a quarter past seven,
with his two dollars intact, with a loan of one dollar added to
it, and with five of his original ten cents, he took himself away
to the theater. Afterward, by appointment, he met his new
friend, and did him the honor of accompanying him to the Young
German Shooters' Society ball at Terrace Garden.

It was one of those simple, entirely and genuinely gay
entertainments that assemble the society of the real New
York--the three and a half millions who work and play hard and
live plainly and without pretense, whose ideals center about the
hearth, and whose aspirations are to retire with a competence
early in the afternoon of life, thenceforth placidly to assist in
the prosperity of their children and to have their youth over
again in their grandchildren.

Feuerstein's gaze wandered from face to face among the young
women, to pause at last upon a dark, handsome, strong-looking
daughter of the people. She had coal-black hair that curled
about a low forehead. Her eyes were dreamy and stormy. Her
mouth was sweet, if a trifle petulant. ``And who is she?'' he
asked.

``That's Hilda Brauner,'' replied Horwitz. ``Her father has a
delicatessen in Avenue A. He's very rich--owns three
flat-houses. They must bring him in at least ten thousand net,
not to speak of what he makes in the store. They're fine people,
those Brauners; none nicer anywhere.''

``A beautiful creature,'' said Feuerstein, who was feeling like a
prince who, for reasons of sordid necessity, had condescended to
a party in Fifth Avenue. ``I'd like to meet her.''

``Certainly,'' replied Horwitz. ``I'll introduce her to you.''

She blushed and was painfully ill at ease in presence of his
grand and lofty courtesy--she who had been used to the offhand
manners which prevail wherever there is equality of the sexes and
the custom of frank sociability. And when he asked her to dance
she would have refused had she been able to speak at all. But he
bore her off and soon made her forget herself in the happiness of
being drifted in his strong arm upon the rhythmic billows of the
waltz. At the end he led her to a seat and fell to complimenting
her--his eyes eloquent, his voice, it seemed to her, as
entrancing as the waltz music. When he spoke in German it was
without the harsh sputtering and growling, the slovenly slurring
and clipping to which she had been accustomed. She could answer
only with monosyllables or appreciative looks, though usually she
was a great talker and, as she had much common sense and not a
little wit, a good talker. But her awe of him, which increased
when she learned that he was on the stage, did not prevent her
from getting the two main impressions he wished to make upon
her--that Mr. Feuerstein was a very grand person indeed, and that
he was condescending to be profoundly smitten of her charms.

She was the ``catch'' of Avenue A, taking prospects and looks
together, and the men she knew had let her rule them. In Mr.
Feuerstein she had found what she had been unconsciously seeking
with the Idealismus of genuine youth--a man who compelled her to
look far up to him, a man who seemed to her to embody those
vague dreams of a life grand and beautiful, away off somewhere,
which are dreamed by all young people, and by not a few older
ones, who have less excuse for not knowing where happiness is to
be found. He spent the whole evening with her; Mrs. Liebers and
Sophie, with whom she had come, did not dare interrupt her
pleasure, but had to stay, yawning and cross, until the last
strain of Home, Sweet Home.

At parting he pressed her hand. ``I have been happy,'' he
murmured in a tone which said, ``Mine is a sorrow-shadowed soul
that has rarely tasted happiness.''

She glanced up at him with ingenuous feeling in her eyes and
managed to stammer: ``I hope we'll meet again.''

``Couldn't I come down to see you Sunday evening?''

``There's a concert in the Square. If you're there I might see
you.''

``Until Sunday night,'' he said, and made her feel that the three
intervening days would be for him three eternities.

She thought of him all the way home in the car, and until she
fell asleep. His sonorous name was in her mind when she awoke in
the morning; and, as she stood in the store that day, waiting on
the customers, she looked often at the door, and, with the
childhood-surviving faith of youth in the improbable and
impossible, hoped that he would appear. For the first time she
was definitely discontented with her lot, was definitely
fascinated by the idea that there might be something higher and
finer than the simple occupations and simple enjoyments which had
filled her life thus far.

In the evening after supper her father and mother left her and
her brother August in charge, and took their usual stroll for
exercise and for the profound delight of a look at their
flat-houses--those reminders of many years of toil and thrift.
They had spent their youth, she as cook, he as helper, in one of
New York's earliest delicatessen shops. When they had saved
three thousand dollars they married and put into effect the plan
which had been their chief subject of conversation every day and
every evening for ten years-- they opened the ``delicatessen'' in
Avenue A, near Second Street. They lived in two back rooms; they
toiled early and late for twenty-three contented, cheerful years
--she in the shop when she was not doing the housework or caring
for the babies, he in the great clean cellar, where the cooking
and cabbage-cutting and pickling and spicing were done. And now,
owners of three houses that brought in eleven thousand a year
clear, they were about to retire. They had fixed on a place in
the Bronx, in the East Side, of course, with a big garden, where
every kind of gay flower and good vegetable could be grown, and
an arbor where there could be pinochle, beer and coffee on Sunday
afternoons. In a sentence, they were honorable and exemplary
members of that great mass of humanity which has the custody of
the present and the future of the race--those who live by the
sweat of their own brows or their own brains, and train their
children to do likewise, those who maintain the true ideals of
happiness and progress, those from whom spring all the workers
and all the leaders of thought and action.

They walked slowly up the Avenue, speaking to their neighbors,
pausing now and then for a joke or to pat a baby on the head,
until they were within two blocks of Tompkins Square. They
stopped before a five-story tenement, evidently the
dwelling-place of substantial, intelligent, self-respecting
artisans and their families, leading the natural life of busy
usefulness. In its first floor was a delicatessen-- the sign
read ``Schwartz and Heilig.'' Paul Brauner pointed with his long-
stemmed pipe at the one show-window.

``Fine, isn't it? Beautiful!'' he exclaimed in Low-German--they
and almost all their friends spoke Low-German, and used English
only when they could not avoid it.

The window certainly was well arranged. Only a merchant who knew
his business thoroughly--both his wares and his customers--could
have thus displayed cooked chickens, hams and tongues, the
imported sausages and fish, the jelly-inclosed paste of chicken
livers, the bottles and jars of pickled or spiced meats and
vegetables and fruits. The spectacle was adroitly arranged to
move the hungry to yearning, the filled to regret, and the
dyspeptic to rage and remorse. And behind the show-window lay a
shop whose shelves, counters and floor were clean as toil could
make and keep them, and whose air was saturated with the most
delicious odors.

Mrs. Brauner nodded. ``Heilig was up at half-past four this
morning,'' she said. ``He cleans out every morning and he moves
everything twice a week.'' She had a round, honest face that was
an inspiring study in simplicity, sense and sentiment.

``What a worker!'' was her husband's comment. ``So unlike most
of the young men nowadays. If August were only like him!''

``You'd think Heilig was a drone if he were your son,'' replied
Mrs. Brauner. She knew that if any one else had dared thus to
attack their boy, his father would have been growling and
snapping like an angry bear.

``That's right!'' he retorted with mock scorn. ``Defend your
children! You'll be excusing Hilda for putting off Heilig
next.''

``She'll marry him--give her time,'' said Mrs. Brauner. ``She's
romantic, but she's sensible, too--why, she was born to make a
good wife to a hard-working man. Where's there another woman
that knows the business as she does? You admit on her birthdays
that she's the only real helper you ever had.''

``Except you,'' said her husband.

``Never mind me.'' Mrs. Brauner pretended to disdain the
compliment.

Brauner understood, however. ``We have had the best, you and
I,'' said he.

``Arbeit und Liebe und Heim. Nicht wahr?'' Otto Heilig appeared
in his doorway and greeted them awkwardly. Nor did their
cordiality lessen his embarrassment. His pink and white skin was
rosy red and his frank blue-gray eyes shifted uneasily. But he
was smiling with eager friendliness, showing even, sound, white
teeth.

``You are coming to see us to-morrow?'' asked Mrs. Brauner--he
always called on Sunday afternoons and stayed until five, when he
had to open shop for the Sunday supper rush.

``Why--that is--not exactly--no,'' he stammered. Hilda had told
him not to come, but he knew that if he admitted it to her
parents they would be severe with her. He didn't like anybody to
be severe with Hilda, and he felt that their way of helping his
courtship was not suited to the modern ideas. ``They make her
hate me,'' he often muttered. But if he resented it he would
offend them and Hilda too; if he acquiesced he encouraged them
and added to Hilda's exasperation.

Mrs. Brauner knew at once that Hilda was in some way the cause of
the break in the custom. ``Oh, you must come,'' she said.
``We'd feel strange all week if we didn't see you on Sunday.''

``Yes--I must have my cards,'' insisted Brauner. He and Otto
always played pinochle; Otto's eyes most of the time and his
thoughts all the time were on Hilda, in the corner, at the
zither, playing the maddest, most romantic music; her father
therefore usually won, poor at the game though he was. It made
him cross to lose, and Otto sometimes defeated his own luck
deliberately when love refused to do it for him.

``Very well, then--that is--if I can-- I'll try to come.''

Several customers pushed past him into his shop and he had to
rejoin his partner, Schwartz, behind the counters. Brauner and
his wife walked slowly home--it was late and there would be more
business than Hilda and August could attend to. As they crossed
Third Street Brauner said: ``Hilda must go and tell him to come.
This is her doing.''

``But she can't do that,'' objected Mrs. Brauner. ``She'd say it
was throwing herself at his head.''

``Not if I send her?'' Brauner frowned with a seeming of
severity. ``Not if I, her father, send her--for two chickens, as
we're out?'' Then he laughed. His fierceness was the family
joke when Hilda was small she used to say, ``Now, get mad,
father, and make little Hilda laugh!''

Hilda was behind the counter, a customer watching with fascinated
eyes the graceful, swift movements of her arms and hands as she
tied up a bundle. Her sleeves were rolled to her dimpled elbows,
and her arms were round and strong and white, and her skin was
fine and smooth. Her shoulders were wide, but not square; her
hips were narrow, her wrists, her hands, her head, small. She
looked healthy and vigorous and useful as well as beautiful.

When the customers had gone Brauner said: ``Go up to Schwartz
and Heilig, daughter, and ask them for two two-pound chickens.
And tell Otto Heilig you'll be glad to see him to-morrow.''

``But we don't need the chickens, now. We--'' Hilda's brow
contracted and her chin came out.

``Do as I tell you,'' said her father.

``MY children shall not sink to the disrespect of these days.''

``But I shan't be here to-morrow! I've made another
engagement.''

``You SHALL be here to-morrow! If you don't wish young Heilig
here for your own sake, you must show consideration for your
parents. Are they to be deprived of their Sunday afternoon? You
have never done this before, Hilda. You have never forgotten us
before.''

Hilda hung her head; after a moment she unrolled her sleeves,
laid aside her apron and set out. She was repentant toward her
father, but she felt that Otto was to blame. She determined to
make him suffer for it--how easy it was to make him suffer, and
how pleasant to feel that this big fellow was her slave! She
went straight up to him. ``So you complained of me, did you?''
she said scornfully, though she knew well that he had not, that
he could not have done anything that even seemed mean.

He flushed. ``No--no,'' he stammered. ``No, indeed, Hilda.
Don't think--''

She looked contempt. ``Well, you've won. Come down Sunday
afternoon. I suppose I'll have to endure it.''

``Hilda, you're wrong. I will NOT come!'' He was angry, but his
mind was confused. He loved her with all the strength of his
simple, straightforward nature. Therefore he appeared at his
worst before her--usually either incoherent or dumb. It was not
surprising that whenever it was suggested that only a superior
man could get on so well as he did, she always answered: ``He
works twice as hard as any one else, and you don't need much
brains if you'll work hard.''

She now cut him short. ``If you don't come I'll have to suffer
for it,'' she said. ``You MUST come! I'll not be glad to see
you. But if you don't come I'll never speak to you again!'' And
she left him and went to the other counter and ordered the
chickens from Schwartz.

Heilig was wretched,--another of those hideous dilemmas over
which he had been stumbling like a drunken man in a dark room
full of furniture ever since he let his mother go to Mrs. Brauner
and ask her for Hilda. He watched Hilda's splendid back, and
fumbled about, upsetting bottles and rattling dishes, until she
went out with a glance of jeering scorn. Schwartz burst out
laughing.

``Anybody could tell you are in love,'' he said. ``Be stiff with
her, Otto, and you'll get her all right. It don't do to let a
woman see that you care about her. The worse you treat the women
the better they like it. When they used to tell my father about
some woman being crazy over a man, he always used to say, `What
sort of a scoundrel is he?' That was good sense.''

Otto made no reply. No doubt these maxims were sound and wise;
but how was he to apply them? How could he pretend indifference
when at sight of her he could open his jaws only enough to
chatter them, could loosen his tongue only enough to roll it
thickly about? ``I can work,'' he said to himself, ``and I can
pay my debts and have something over; but when it comes to love
I'm no good.''

II

BRASS OUTSHINES GOLD

Hilda returned to her father's shop and was busy there until nine
o'clock. Then Sophie Liebers came and they went into the Avenue
for a walk. They pushed their way through and with the throngs
up into Tompkins Square--the center of one of the several vast
districts, little known because little written about, that
contain the real New York and the real New Yorkers. In the
Square several thousand young people were promenading, many of
the girls walking in pairs, almost all the young men paired off,
each with a young woman. It was warm, and the stars beamed down
upon the hearts of young lovers, blotting out for them electric
lights and surrounding crowds. It caused no comment there for a
young couple to walk hand in hand, looking each at the other with
the expression that makes commonplace eyes wonderful. And when
the sound of a kiss came from a somewhat secluded bench, the only
glances east in the direction whence it had come were glances of
approval or envy.

``There's Otto Heilig dogging us,'' said Hilda to Sophie, as they
walked up and down. ``Do you wonder I hate him?'' They talked
in American, as did all the young people, except with those of
their elders who could speak only German.

Sophie was silent. If Hilda had been noting her face she would
have seen a look of satisfaction.

``I can't bear him,'' went on Hilda. ``No girl could. He's so
stupid and--and common!'' Never before had she used that last
word in such a sense. Mr. Feuerstein had begun to educate her.

Sophie's unobserved look changed to resentment. ``Of course he's
not equal to Mr. Feuerstein,'' she said. ``But he's a very nice
fellow--at least for an ordinary girl.'' Sophie's father was an
upholsterer, and not a good one. He owned no tenements-- was
barely able to pay the rent for a small corner of one. Thus her
sole dower was her pretty face and her cunning. She had an
industrious, scheming, not overscrupulous brain and--her hopes
and plans. Nor had she time to waste. For she was nearer
twenty-three than twenty-two, at the outer edge of the
marriageable age of Avenue A, which believes in an early start at
what it regards as the main business of life--the family.

``You surely couldn't marry such a man as Otto!'' said Hilda
absently. Her eyes were searching the crowd, near and far.

Sophie laughed. ``Beggars can't be choosers,'' she answered.
``I think he's all right--as men go. It wouldn't do for me to
expect too much.''

Just then Hilda caught sight of Mr. Feuerstein--the godlike head,
the glorious hair, the graceful hat. Her manner changed--her
eyes brightened, her cheeks reddened, and she talked fast and
laughed a great deal. As they passed near him she laughed loudly
and called out to Sophie as if she were not at her elbow--she
feared he would not see. Mr. Feuerstein turned his picturesque
head, slowly lifted his hat and joined them. At once Hilda
became silent, listening with rapt attention to the commonplaces
he delivered in sonorous, oracular tones.

As he deigned to talk only to Hilda, who was walking between
Sophie and him, Sophie was free to gaze round. She spied Otto
Heilig drooping dejectedly along. She adroitly steered her party
so that it crossed his path. He looked up to find himself
staring at Hilda. She frowned at this disagreeable apparition
into her happiness, and quickened her step. But Sophie, without
letting go of Hilda's hand, paused and spoke to Otto. Thus Hilda
was forced to stop and to say ungraciously: ``Mr. Feuerstein,
Mr. Heilig.''

Then she and Mr. Feuerstein went on, and Sophie drew the
reluctant Otto in behind them. She gradually slackened her pace,
so that she and Heilig dropped back until several couples
separated them from Hilda and Mr. Feuerstein. A few minutes and
Hilda and Mr. Feuerstein were seated on a bench in the deep
shadow of a tree, Sophie and Heilig walking slowly to and fro a
short distance away.

Heilig was miserable with despondent jealousy. He longed to
inquire about this remarkable-looking new friend of Hilda's. For
Mr. Feuerstein seemed to be of that class of strangers whom
Avenue A condemns on their very appearance. It associates
respectability with work only, and it therefore suspects those
who look as if they did not work and did not know how. Sophie
was soon answering of her own accord the questions Heilig as a
gentleman could not ask. ``You must have heard of Mr.
Feuerstein? He's an actor-- at the German Theater. I don't
think he's much of an actor--he's one of the kind that do all
their acting off the stage.''

Heilig laughed unnaturally. He did not feel like laughing, but
wished to show his gratitude to Sophie for this shrewd blow at
his enemy. ``He's rigged out like a lunatic, isn't he?'' Otto
was thinking of the long hair, the low-rolling shirt collar and
the velvet collar on his coat,--light gray, to match his hat and
suit.

``I don't see what Hilda finds in him,'' continued Sophie. ``It
makes me laugh to look at him; and when he talks I can hardly
keep from screaming in his face. But Hilda's crazy over him, as
you see. He tells all sorts of romances about himself, and she
believes every word. I think she'll marry him--you know, her
father lets her do as she pleases. Isn't it funny that a
sensible girl like Hilda can be so foolish?''

Heilig did not answer this, nor did he heed the talk on love and
marriage which the over-eager Sophie proceeded to give. And it
was talk worth listening to, as it presented love and marriage in
the interesting, romantic-sensible Avenue A light. Otto was
staring gloomily at the shadow of the tree. He would have been
gloomier could he have witnessed the scene to which the unmoral
old elm was lending its impartial shade.

Mr. Feuerstein was holding Hilda's hand while he looked soulfully
down into her eyes. She was returning his gaze, her eyes
expressing all the Schwarmerei of which their dark depths were
capable at nineteen. He was telling her what a high profession
the actor's was, how great he was as an actor, how commonplace
her life there, how beautiful he could make it if only he had
money. It was an experience to hear Mr. Feuerstein say the word
``money.'' Elocution could go no further in surcharging five
letters with contempt. His was one of those lofty natures that
scorn all such matters of intimate concern to the humble,
hard-pressed little human animal as food, clothing and shelter.
He so loathed money that he would not deign to work for it, and
as rapidly as possible got rid of any that came into his
possession.

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